The Perils of Designing

 When I start a new design I have an idea in my mind of where I want things to go. Sometimes I even have a very crude outline of the design.  I have stitches in mind. This is all well and good until two weeks into working on a design element, it is not turning out the way I want it to be.  

Then I spend some time thinking about all aspects of the design. First and foremost. Can I turn it into a design element? Would I actually wear it with that particular design element? Can I further modify the design element to make it look better? Can it be blocked out? Would it look too wonky? Would anyone else want to wear it?  Sometimes this takes weeks. Sometimes just the length of a television show.  

All I know is that 2 weeks worth of stitching comes out in about 40 minutes.  This includes winding the yarn into balls. Sighs! Then I pick up the next yarn and try something totally random and different.  

If at first you don’t secede, skip the chocolate cake. Pick up your yarn and needles to try again.  With  the hopes that it will come out even better than the first design.  

Enter the design world at your own risk. Please leave your egos at the door.  

New Designs and a Contest

The best thing I love about designing new patterns is that I can change the flow of the pattern at the drop of a hat.  Well today the hat dropped on the new NH Shawl. I was knitting and did not like my ending. So today at lunch I looked through my design bibles. I found an ending that I like but wanted it less over the top.  So I am modifying a ruffled edging.  Hey, just because it’s in a stitch bible does not mean I have to use it as written. It is called pattern design for a reason. I should have it done by tomorrow and then  start writing the pattern.

Now to the fun part of the new pattern. My second pattern of this year. Will I be able to get it self published by the end of the month, remember it’s a short month.  It does not matter if you are right or wrong. Just send in your guess of yes or no with contest written in the subject line to skaro964@gmail.com.  The winner will get an assortment of my choosing of my hand spun yarn and some stitch markers plus a copy of my new pattern. I will put all of the names in a bowl and John will pick the winner. By the way John does not know that he volunteered for this job.

Just to let you know that this contest is open to everybody, but those outside of the United States will be asked to share the cost of postage if they win. This will be the difference of the the U.S. postage and the international rate.  This contest is not sponsored or endorsed by blogger.com. I am solely responsible for the prizes.